"Knowing the man as I do..." (Is this for real? I believe so)

Liberal Rapture presents a fascinating email exchange between an Obama supporter and an Obama opponent. The "hook" here is that the anti-O person developed a distaste for the man based on real-life face-to-face interaction.

Unfortunately, LR strips the names from this exchange. That decision allows for cries of "fake." I have a long-abiding interest in literary hoaxes, and I don't think that this is an example of the genre. Perhaps the persons involved with these missives will identify themselves?

(The Obama supporter is said to be a well-known writer. Josh Marshall and Joe Conason seem likely candidates. The few private emails from Marshall that I've received or seen bear a stylistic resemblance.)

This post will offer a few excerpts. I'll boldface the bits that seem most revealing, and the added paragraph breaks should increase readability. For purposes of clarity, we will, for now, call the guy who dislikes Obama "Fred." As for the guy who likes Obama -- let's call him "Ed." If Fred or Ed is actually female (or if both are female), I will apologize. If you can think of any female names that rhyme with Fred and Ed, let me know.

We open with the words of Fred. He gently (too gently) chastises Ed for Ed's displays of knee-jerk Clinton Derangement Syndrome:

I also think you are way too critical of Bill Clinton. He certainly had his faults, but not everything bad in life can be laid at his door. And, he isn't as venal as I think you believe him to be. As intelligent as he is, he is also a product of his time, his upbringing and his personality. You do ignore the fact that his Vice President did try to - albeit far from boldly enough - begin to build an infrastucture and education of the public that might lead away from insane oil dependence and toward a more sustainable way of life. And, I think you forgive Bush II his real agency in creating the morass we are in today...

You get the picture. Ed really believes that everything that has gone wrong since 2000 was all the fault of that awful, awful Bill Clinton. Proof, once again, that Obots are psychotic.

Here's Fred again, on his interactions with O-man:

At a very fundamental level, I have no idea on what you base your belief that Obama is "basically honest and intelligent." Knowing the man as I do, including the people he surrounds himself with (and no -I'm not talking about just his spiritual counselors but those people who have nurtured his political career and on whom he relies for advice), I have found him to be a rather deceitful person who, certainly, is smart enough but whose vaunted intelligence is vastly overrated - his judgment even more so.

First, to address the claims I've heard so many make that he must be intelligent in light of his graduating from HLS. Believe me - having attended an Ivy League law school myself - I know that such attendance is not a proxy for intelligence. Nor is becoming president of the law review when it is a popularity vote as opposed to merit-based based on assessment of scholarship. (I also am only a few years younger than Obama and am African-American, so I fully understand that the bar for entering a top law school is higher for people of color - that doesn't make all of us geniuses just by the mere fact that we were there.)

Moreover, I haven't found his writing (which has only been about himself) or his post-graduate career to be anything that would lend me to think more highly of his intelligence.

More importantly, I've had the opportunity to meet and talk with Obama in small, intimate settings and gain a better sense of the man than anyone can based on t.v. interviews and his ubiquitous speechifying. (I was for many years active in the Democratic party. I also worked for some years for an investment bank which was a major backer of Obama from the time he ran for the Senate. And, he was eager to spend lots of time with the top bankers of Wall St in small dinner settings in glorious NY penthouses. I was often invited along simply because I was one of the few blacks at my bank they could invite to "color" these dinners.)

Over the next months I then was able to talk with him and hear him talk in various fundraising venues - which is where he spent most of his short time in the Senate before hitting the presidential campaign trail. (The first time post-convention was at George Soros' house). I came away each time a little more uneasy, particularly when it became clear he was going to run for President. He skims the surface of issues and problems. In fact, his remarks, when not prepared come across as vapid. He repeats, like rote, tired democratic tropes. (And frankly many Republican ones. He truly does admire Reagan and not just because Reagan won elections).

He seems to have spent little to no time in deep introspection about any particular area of policy. He spent very little time at his actual job in the Senate or doing any substantive work - which was similar to his time in the IL State Senate. (What was little remarked upon when he ran for US Senate or POTUS was what a mess the Chicago district he represented was left when he advanced to the US Senate during a period when even poor districts in the country got at least somewhat better.)

He certainly - for someone whose father (like mine) is African and who (as did I) lived overseas for a time - seems to at bottom be relatively incurious about geopolitics. And, he would get a glazed look in his eyes and look about for someone else to move on to when I raised questions about how he would address the looming US financial crisis I could see on the horizon.

All in all, I found him to be a completely conventional politician - interested in his own advancement - with no particular personal vision for the future of this country or the world.

Comparing Obama to Bush, I begin to wonder: Has the job of running for presidency become so difficult that the only individuals who will brave those obstacles are those who do so for reasons having nothing to do with policy, ideology or ability? Dubya ran for the highest office because "God" told him to do it -- meaning, he was trying to one-up his father. Similarly, Obama seems to have pursued the office in order to settle personal self-esteem issues.

Fred continues:

This was why his entire campaign rested on the ephemera of "hope and change" which could mean anything one wanted it to mean, along with a list of plagarized policy "positions" taken from other democratic primary candidates. From what I've learned about him, I do not believe he has deep guiding principles and certainly no specific political philosophy or forward-thinking vision for how to right our ship.

Even more disturbingly, having followed the primary campaign closely and having good friends in both his campaign and Hillary Clinton's, I can also say how shocked I became at the really dishonest tactics he used, from race-baiting to caucus fraud to paying cyber stalkers to terrorize pro-Clinton writers and website owners. But, given the stunts he pulled in IL in the early days of his career that I came to discover in doing due diligence before deciding on my own vote, this really probably shouldn't have shocked me as much as they did.

Let us repeat those words: paying cyber stalkers to terrorize pro-Clinton writers and website owners.

Oh yeah. Hell yeah.

Recently, a DU participant chastised me for not getting over the primaries. You bet your ass I won't get over those outrages. I will never forgive or forget the death threats I received or the daily barrage of cyber-hate I endured simply because I dared to defend Evil Hillary from the smear campaigns directed against her.

And I know damn well just who bought and paid for all of that "cyber stalking." As noted in an earlier post, much of it came from the same ISP in Chicago.

I'm still furious about what occurred then. Anyone who forgives a death threat is a masochist, and I sure as hell ain't that. There will be no reconciliation. Ever. Some actions create eternal enmity, and before committing such actions, people should think twice.

Back to Fred:

For goodness sake, the man broke virtually every important promise he made during the primary campaign as soon as it was over, and he's busy continuing this trend now that he's president. Call me crazy, but that doesn't strike me as someone who is "basically honest."

Here's Ed, the Obi supporter, in response...

Anyone in the public arena ends up speaking in tropes, because one is bombarded with the same questions incessantly. By necessity you develop a refined rhetoric.

Maybe his "glazed look" was simple fatigue. I know how I get on the road (and I'm not in politics, where you really have to be nice to people).

Pretty pathetic rationalization, if ya asks me. Ed then hits Fred with what he no doubt considers a crippling blow:

Somehow i suspect you are a disappointed Hillary Clinton booster.

For people like Ed, calling someone a "disappointed Hillary Clinton booster" is the ultimate insult. A simplistic characterization of that sort offers the Eds of this world a way to ignore unnerving facts. Back in the 1980s, Reagan supporters acted the same way when they accused all opponents of being "socialists."

Obots love to believe that anyone not in the Cult of Obi must belong to the competing Cult of Hill. I piss them off when I tell them that I wish Hillary had never run, because they want to pigeonhole me and they can't. The fact is that I am not a cultist of any sort. I never worshiped or even much liked the woman, although she did start to grow on me at the very end. I supported her (grudgingly) for but one reason: She was the only thing standing between a corrupt Chicago pol and the Democratic nomination.

And that's a perfect lead-in to Fred's rejoinder...

I did donate to her primary campaign, although not at the maximum limit, even though I could. I did not stalk pro-Obama blogs to send out wild accusations about the man or insult him and/or berate his supporters. I did not cover myself, house or car with pro-Hillary paraphenalia as did so many Obama supporters in XX and elsewhere.

I did not ignore Hillary's faults or completely dismiss where I disagreed with her or sing praises of her that boarded on worship. Where she said she would pursue a certain policy or program, I took at her word and didn't try to twist it to mean something that I would like and evaluated how that would change or not change my support. And, where she said something that was gobbledygook (which did happen, although not often), I didn't excuse her; I said so and added that to my evaluation

I have numerous current and former friends and colleagues who worked with Obama in IL who refused to support his candidacy either, but would only say that in private given that so many were in the throes of Obama worship last year.

See also Alice Palmer whose neck Obama stepped on to gain his IL senate seat. She supported Hillary too because between Hillary and Obama, Palmer could trust Hillary. Frankly, to really know Barack is not to love him.

Ed's reply is classic:

You even managed to deflect the question: were you or were you not an active Hillary supporter??

Oh, those Obots! They have a script in their heads, and they will stick to it unto the end of days: All liberal opponents of the great O must be Hillary cultists. Or they must be racists. Antipathy toward O cannot possibly have anything to do with anything that Dear Leader has said or done.

Fred:

I'm sorry, but those who aspire to the Presidency do not get to be given "a chance." They don't get 3 strikes or a couple of screw-ups before we really give them the business. This is not an Outward Bound course for wayward youth...

It would be amusing to me if not so tragic, that during his campaign we were regaled with laudatory tales about Obama's sterling judgment which was supposed to make him "ready on day one." Now, what we hear is yelling from the left that we need to "give him a chance" and we're harshing his mellow as well as that of his followers by pointing out that he's clearly far from ready and frankly seems to be already not up to the task.

And, no - not everyone in the public arena "ends up speaking in tropes." I know quite a few very talented individuals who can carry on intelligent, nuanced conversations with a keen grasp and intellectual curiosity about a broad range of subjects in very different venues with very different audiences. They also happen to be great managers too. That's another canard that lets Obama off the hook for being much less than his hype.

Plus, as I tried to point out, a number of the venues I was in with him - 10 to 15 people at a meeting or a dinner - were not ones where you would expect someone to give you not much more than a stump speech in response to hard, policy questions. Not people who were aiming for the Presidency, at least.

And, he was certainly fairly animated when talking about his "life" and "his story which could only have happened in the U.S." (tell that to all my relatives and friends in the UK and Germany who are biracial with one African parent) and how he went into politics "for his girls future" and when asking us to reach deep in our pockets to help him succeed. It was only when he was pressed to delve deeply into significant policy issues that he became uninterested, bored and fidgety.

These words buttress the point I made earlier: Obama pursued the presidency for personal reasons, not to accomplish any political goals.

The exchange goes on from there, but I've already quoted it rather too extensively. Please click on the link to read the original. (Ed says that Obi will "grow" into the office, as FDR did. But FDR had proven himself as Governor of New York, in which capacity he instituted many much-needed reforms. Obama did nothing in the Senate.)

To reiterate: Although Liberal Rapture blanks out the names, I think that this exchange is no hoax. (For one thing, Fred and Ed have very different writing styles.) If you disagree with that assessment, feel free to give your reasons, as long as you express yourself in civilized tones. Cyberstalkers will, as always, be deleted on sight.